Title: Maybe, Just Maybe
Author: ScullyAsTrinity
Rating: PG
A/N: This fan fic is based on a song by Averi. It's called 'For Better or Worse.' As an Averi rep, I've been sent a bunch and a half of promo CDs. If anyone wants one, just hit me up with your address (in an email please, not a review!) and I'll mail you one for free. I swear, it's worth it. Averi is amazing.
Also: Thanks, for the crazy ass buddy chat guys!
Email: BNLXPhile12…I'm at America Online… can't write the whole dot com part in because FanFiction will automatically delete it. Sadness.
Summary: This is me now, for better or worse. The person I was is not just someone you've heard of.
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When things become impossible, sometimes choices became easier to make. Because, in most cases, when things become impossible, there was only one answer, no matter how badly you didn't want to admit it to yourself.
He thought he was different. He'd learned that he wasn't. He's not.
Backed into a corner, he was quite literally backed into a corner and he had no way out.
In fact, he stood in the corner, gazing at her, asleep on the break room sofa. With every breath she took, he was forced further into the dark crevice from wanting to feel her breath on his skin. Oh yes, he felt claustrophobic in the position he was in.
He had to make up his mind, once and for all. Want her and do something about it, or ignore the feelings that itched at the base of his skull and allow her to move on. To allow her to find herself a life before he had destroyed every chance for her to live. It wasn't fair to her, to lead her on as he'd been doing.
He did want to touch her, want to kiss her, wake up next to her, pick her brain. He wanted all those things, in the end. Thing was, he didn't know where to begin. The line of their friendship had become so blurry he was almost sure that it had disappeared entirely. He wasn't willing to let that happen. He wasn't willing to lose her friendship, and he'd die trying to retrieve it from the depths of oblivion if he had to.
But before he could do anything he'd have to alter himself, change some things. Become more open, more accepting. Softer around the edges. Perhaps more malleable. Maybe just a little more perceptive to the people around him. A bit more willing to let her in. Because maybe, just maybe she could help to fill the fissures in his heart.
Hey, it was as good a possibility as anything.
He would change, he promised himself years ago that he'd change. Then again, it would have been easier to lower his cholesterol, drop twenty or so pounds, and find a wife... than to change. The man had lived his whole life based on a system, cloistering his feelings, his heart. Years of order, years of often peaceful oblivion to the feelings of the people around him.
What a difference a few years could make.
A yawn and a cough startled him from the corner, forcing him to come forward and rest against a counter. He looked on as she got her bearings, remembering where she was, that she had indeed once again taken to resting at work.
"How long have I been out?" She asked him, wiping the hours of sleep from her eyes, looking too much like a little girl.
'You haven't been out.' He wanted to say, he longed to say. 'I've been out, for about the last... thirty years of my life I've been out. I want to get back in.'
Where was in? He didn't know. He'd yet to address her question.
As if he didn't know, he ball-parked it. "A few hours, give or take." He hid his blush in his coffee, raising his mug to his lips and drinking the liquid even though it was far too hot. Scalding his mouth, his tongue, his throat... much in the same way he was sure one of her kisses might.
The brunette nodded and stood to stretch out her back and Grissom went back for another scalding pull of his coffee. It was becoming far too difficult to pretend, pretend like he wasn't waiting for some life defining moment to change things for him. And he was tired, just so, so worn out from trying to fight everything at once.
She wasn't perfection; she was far from it, especially when compared to society's standards. But she was far more than perfect to him. Her flaws just accentuated that which made her human, so much more human than he would ever be.
He knew then that he wouldn't be happy being committed to living only in her memory. It wouldn't do for her to become a figment of his imagination, a specter only living and breathing in the confines of his fitful slumber. She could live there, live her life juxtaposed to his. Maybe they could both finally find comfort in each other.
It could be enough, having her there with him, but only if it was forever. It would only work if everything was forever.
It was all about the way they went out, not about the way they came in. He could forgive his past only if it led to a bearable future, a future with her.
But none of it was really to do with him, it was all to do with her. What she needed, what she could give him. What she wanted. And, after all that time, it seemed that she still wanted him.
After all, it was lonely and cold there without her. What could the addition of her fire to his life really hurt? Would it hurt, or would it be a pleasant little ache that never subsided.
He'd never know unless he tried and he was damn tired of speculating.
The coffee had turned bitter in his mouth, and he almost spit it out, but held back and swallowed it. It felt to him as if he were swallowing ten years of guilt.
Before leaving the room, he got her attention by a finger under her chin. She looked at him, perplexed at the warmth of his hands, the serenity in his eyes. "I want to make it up to you. I'm going to make it up to you." With that, he dumped the coffee, his most recent excuse to hide, and walked from the break room.
He felt uplifted, resilient in a way. This was the new him.
This was him, now... for better or worse. But hopefully for better.